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Clothing chain, started in classroom, celebrates East Coast

Entrepreneur Alex MacLean started hoodie business while at university, which has turned into $12 million in sales.

Alex McLean, founder of East Coast Lifestyle, is seen with Ghostface Killah of the hip hop group Wu Tang Clan. The group members are wearing East Coast Lifestyle gear on their summer 2015 tour. (Supplied Photo)

HALIFAX—Alex MacLean literally took the shirt off his back to get his business going.

The 23-year-old Halifax native started his clothing company East Coast Lifestyle two years ago as part of an assignment for a business class at Acadia University in Wolfville in the Annapolis Valley.

The logo, with an anchor in the centre, was aimed at showing off pride for the East Coast, but it is now morphing into pride for any east coast from the United States to Australia.

Part of the success came because MacLean got the shirts and hoodies into the hands of well-known Maritimers like NHL star Sidney Crosby, who hails from nearby Cole Harbour.

MacLean, who played every sport as a kid including hockey, heard from a friend that Crosby would be practising with other NHL players at a Halifax arena in the summer of 2013.

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He delivered a box of free T-shirts. A trainer then ran out to say, “Sidney didn’t get any gear. Do you have more large T-shirts?”

MacLean didn’t. So he took off his own shirt in the freezing arena, and handed it to the trainer. A week later, someone posted a photo of Crosby on Instagram, wearing that shirt in Los Angeles.

Others spotted wearing the brand include NHL’s Jason Spezza and Adam McQuaid, singer Ed Sheeran, Kim Coates who plays Tig Trager on the TV show Sons of Anarchy, and members of hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan are wearing specially designed shirts on stage.

Social media may have grown the brand – but the idea was first conceived in a Venture Creation class taught by business professor Michael Sheppard, with the focus on developing a “minimally viable product.”

“He stood out. He was so keen,” said Sheppard, who teaches startup management techniques learned from Silicon Valley entrepreneurs —taking steps to reduce risk before investing too much time or money into a product.

He urged caution at first about the offer of an $800 loan from his parents Scott and Cindy to place his first order of 30 hoodies.

“I thought it was too much risk for a student, but he was sure it would go,” Sheppard said.

And MacLean was right.

“I sold them all to my friends, for $40 a pop,” said MacLean. “Then I could afford 60 hoodies, and I put every penny back into the business.”

His mother Cindy admits she was skeptical at first, remembering the night they offered him the loan. “We went to bed, and said we will never see the money again,” she said.

The class project has become a company with 20 employees, including eight handling online orders in Toronto, with $12 million in sales in the second year of the business.

The company opened its first retail store in Halifax in the Seaport Market near Pier 21 this summer. It is now planning an expansion, with a West Coast Lifestyle line, featuring mountains instead of anchors, to be sold in stores in British Columbia and Alberta.

The East Coast Lifestyle clothing is already in 73 stores across Canada that focus on surfing and snowboarding such as Pseudio and Below the Belt, which has an outlet at Vaughan Mills, the only place in the GTA where East Coast Lifestyle is sold.

“We want to stay exclusive and hard to get,” he said. “We want to have the (brand’s) image stay true to the skate or snow culture.”

MacLean estimates about 70 per cent of sales come from stores, and another 30 per cent from direct online sales. The unisex T-shirts sell for $34 and hoodies are $64.

This fall, East Coast Lifestyle gear will soon be available in stores in Sydney, Australia, since the city conveniently sits on the east coast of the continent.

While it started out with hoodies, made in Alberta, and T-shirts, made by Avid Apparel in North York, the company has branched out to include baby onesies, toques and even watches.

MacLean’s two sisters Haley, 22, and Emma, 18, have folded more shirts than they can count. Deliveries are still being sent to the family home in the south end of Halifax, where MacLean initially sold hoodies off the front lawn.

“I would run out on the same day,” he said. “I was battling with supply and demand, and trying to fulfill all this demand. I started approaching stores to get off my mom’s front lawn.”

His mother Cindy is still getting daily deliveries to her house, with boxes lining the porch and filling the basement. “It has been a lot of fun to watch it, and watch him live his dreams,” she said.

However, she didn’t get to watch him walk across the stage at his university convocation ceremony in May – because as first-runner up of the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards, he was invited to visit the White House along with other top winners in a contest that drew more than 2,000 competitors.

Instead of donning a cap and gown, MacLean got to meet stars of the reality television show Shark Tank such as Mark Cuban and Daymon John, as well as U.S. President Barack Obama.

“I brought him a shirt, but he didn’t put it on over his shirt,” MacLean said. “It was awesome to give the president some gear.”

Back in Wolfville, just after his cousin Scott received his business degree, school officials gave a shout-out to Alex, who was in Washington at the time.

He earned an A on the class project, and his professor Sheppard is happiest that MacLean has adapted lessons from another class he taught on social enterprise, so East Coast Lifestyle is giving back a portion of profits to the community.

“It was my favourite class I ever took. It was a life changer,” MacLean said. “It’s my career. The brand changed my life.”

And this fall, MacLean is heading to Sydney, Australia, to finalize an agreement to see the clothing sold in five stores.

He’s hoping to stop in Tokyo to find a retailer there, since that megacity is on the east coast of Japan.

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